Sherry Chandler » 2006 » April » 30
from the Washington Post:
Massive “Stop Genocide” rallies are planned on the Mall and across the nation today to urge the Bush administration to take stronger action to end the violence in Sudan’s Darfur region.
Thousands of people are expected to converge on Washington, including 240 busloads of activists from 41 states, local and national politicians and such celebrity speakers as actor George Clooney, Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel and Olympic speed skater Joey Cheek…Public support to end the bloodshed is growing.
…
The Janjaweed continue to murder and rape women and children of different ethnicity, human rights groups say. Friday, the U.N. World Food Program said it lacked the funds to feed millions in Darfur. Rally speakers are expected to press the Bush administration to push harder for a multinational peacekeeping force to be sent to Darfur and to take a tougher stance against Sudan.
More information at Human Rights First.
This post was written by sherry
I have always admired Susan Sarandon’s work (yes, even her role as Janet White), and I have admired her anti-war stance. Juan Cole has some thoughts today about the death threats she received when she spoke out against war in 2003:
Probably in this generation the practice of calling a signature a “John Hancock” has lapsed. It was a nice piece of folk wisdom. Hancock’s signature on the Declaration of Independence was bold and prominent,and while he did not say the things about it often attributed to him, it is certainly the case that he was signing his own death warrant if he lost. It wasn’t his signing in large script that was significant, but that he was the first to sign. We all have at least once in our lives to sign a John Hancock– to take a principled stance that could get us, if not killed, at least in serious trouble. Otherwise, we’ll have led the life of a timid slave and betrayed our own ethical beings, and we won’t even have anything interesting to put on our tombstones.
Read the rest to find out what John Hancock did say and read what Susan Sarandon said here.
In his Daily Kos Diary, Bob Higgins remembers the 69th anniversary of Guernica, which was Friday:
It is described in Historical accounts as the first time that civilians had been attacked by air power with such wrenching devastation. Devastation by bombing is only a phrase and can’t convey the sights and sounds, the screams of terror and random senseless violence of what occurred in Guernica that day. By morning Guernica would have nothing left but it’s fame.
They came, the Germans in their Heinkels, primitive by our sophisticated standards, they came, the Italians in their Fiats and they hurled their now quaint antique bombs down upon the guilty and the innocent, down upon the cowardly and the valiant, the pure and the profane alike.
They came in the late afternoon and bombed and came again and again and bombed and bombed and bombed and bombed…and returned in the early evening and bombed.
A rubble of ruin, a great hideous forlorn tumble of refuse, of smoke and fire of screams and pain and dust and sun baked rubble cooling in the evening breeze surrounded only by the mournful sounds of dying.
They say that there are conservation laws, that energy and mass cannot be destroyed. Physicists and technicians tell me that other things as well obey these laws, momentum and something called spin.
I wonder about the moans of the dying and the screams of the children, I wonder about the weeping of the mothers and the cries of rage of the brothers, I wonder, are these too conserved?
Are the all sounds of terror and loss from all the wars of history conserved, each war laying it’s grotesque symphony atop the next?
This post was written by sherry
Well, folks, this is the last day of National Poetry Month. I have had a great deal of fun digging up all those 18th and 19th century Kentucky poets, but I have had enough. And I ’spect you have, too. So for the finale, we’re coming up to the present day.
Christine Delea’s new book, The Skeleton Holding Up the Sky, is pretty much hot off the Main Street Rag presses, and it’s a doozy. It’s a book full of poems that I want to read out loud to other people. “Listen to this!” I say, to my husband, to my son, or to whomever else might be in reaching distance of my restraining arm.
Christine was born on Long Island and has since lived all over the country, but we are fortunate now, at least for this little while, to count her as one of our own. She is an assistant professor of Creative Writing at Eastern Kentucky University, she has a long list of awards that you’ll find here, and she is very active both the Kentucky State Poetry Society and the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. A couple of years ago, Christine brought her formidable energy to our KSPS contest, and she is in the process of transforming that event (entry deadline June 30!).
She also makes quilts!
Christine gave me permission to share with you the poem below. It is a particular favorite of mine because it reminds me of many a night with a bottle (or two) of wine and a gaggle of women poets of a certain age (Christine says this poem is true but not factual):
The Hell with Tea and Apple Pie at Perkins—Two Middle-Aged Women in North Dakota Decide They’d Rather Get Drunk
The reds and violets of the last warm spring night
before summer starts sit on the horizon;
a perfect evening to get drunk in a field.
The troubles that come from gray hairs,
bad jobs and too many misunderstandings
require sitting in damp grass,
backs against someone’s
old rusted tractor. Not a night for the usual herbal tea,
opening the checkbook and feeling
their stomachs tighten at the balance,
or agreeing on appetizers while the waiter
daydreams himself elsewhere.
No ex-in-laws who snub sitting two tables over,
trying to eavesdrop. A six pack each,
three divorces between them, they plan to drink
until laughter is forced out of pores
and spills like seed onto the ground.
Grain elevators stain the landscape,
dwarf problems to the size
of corn kernels. As the cans empty,
they yawn, sneeze, refuse to discuss
the problems that sent them to that field.
Instead, they gossip about acquaintances,
fret over each other’s kids,
plan a day at the mall.
Their plans bleed out into the fields,
around them for miles,
across states, over national borders.
No need on a night like this, at this age,
for berries, herbs and apples;
they are surrounded by hardier
sustenance—barley, hops, wheat.
— Mary Christine Delea, from The Skeleton Holding Up the Sky (Main Street Rag, 2006)
Reproduced by permission of the author.
This post was written by sherry
